His whizzing water-pipe he waved;
"Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps;
You, Clutterbuck, come, stir your stumps;
Why are you in such doleful dumps?
A fireman, and afraid of bumps!
What are they feared on ? fools--'od rot 'em!"-
Were the last words of Higginbottom.
THE UPAS IN MARYBONE LANE.
A TREE grew in Java, whose pestilent rind
A venom distilled of the deadliest kind;
The Dutch sent their felons the juices to draw,
And who returned safe, pleaded pardon by law.
Face-muffled, the culprits crept into the vale,
Advancing from windward to 'scape the death-gale:
How few the reward of their victory earned !
For ninty-nine perished for one who returned.
Britannia this Upas-tree bought of Mynheer,
Removed it through Holland, and planted it here;
"Tis now a stock-plant of the genus wolf's-bane,
And one of them blossoms in Marybone Lane.
The house that surrounds it stands first in the row,
Two doors at right angles swing open below;
And the children of misery daily steal in,
And the poison they draw they denominate Gin.
Tax, Chancellor Van, the Batavian to thwart,
This compound of crime at a sovereign a quart;
Let gin fetch per bottle the price of champagne,
And hew down the Upas in Marybone Lane.
FROM "ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S EXHIBITION."
AND thou hast walked about (how strange a story!
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous!
Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon,
Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.
Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade-
Then say, what secret melody was hidden
In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest—if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.
Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass,
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.
I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled;
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.
HYMN TO THE FLOWERS.
(BY HORACE SMITH.)
DAY-STARS! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation,
And dewdrops on her lonely altars sprinkle
As a libation.
Ye matin worshippers! who, bending lowly
Before the uprisen sun, God's lidless eye,
Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy
Incense on high.
Ye bright mosaics! that with storied beauty,
The floor of Nature's temple tesselate,
What numerous emblems of instructive duty
Your forms create!
'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer.
Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,
Which God hath planned;
To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir the winds and waves-its organ thunder-
Its dome the sky.
There, as in solitude and shade I wander
Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod, Awed by the silence, reverently ponder
Your voiceless lips, O Flowers! are living preachers, Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers
From loneliest nook.
Floral apostles! that in dewy splendour
"Weep without woe, and blush without a crime," O may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender
"Thou wert not, Solomon! in all thy glory,
Arrayed," the lilies cry, "in robes like ours;
How vain your grandeur! ah, how transitory
Are human flowers!"
In the sweet scented pictures, heavenly artist!
With which thou paintest Nature's wide-spread hall,
What a delightful lesson thou impartest
Not useless are ye, Flowers! though made for pleasure: Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night, From every source your sanction bids me treasure Harmless delight.
Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary
For such a world of thought could furnish scope?
Each fading calyx a memento mori,
Posthumous glories! angel-like collection!
Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth,
Ye are to me a type of resurrection,
Were I in churchless solitudes remaining,
Far from all voice of teachers and divines,
My soul would find, in flowers of God's ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines!
Sir Alexander Boswell. {Born 1775.
ELDEST Son of "Johnson's Boswell," and grandson of Lord Auchinleck, a Scottish judge, was author of several amusing songs and poems in the Scottish dialect. He wrote some personal satires on Stuart of Dunearn, which led to a duel, in which Boswell was mortally wounded, and died 26th March 1822.
JENNY'S BAWBEE.
I MET four chaps yon birks amang,
Wi' hingin' lugs, and faces lang;
I speired at neibour Bauldy Strang,
Wha's thae I see?
Quo' he, ilk cream-faced pawky chiel,
Thought he'd o' cunning unco skeel,
And here they cam, awa' to steal
Jenny's bawbee.
The first, a captain till his trade,
Wi' skull ill lined, and back weel clad,
Marched round the barn, and by the shed,
And pappit on his knee.
Quo' he: "My goddess, nymph and queen,
Your beauty's dazzled baith my een;"
But nought a beauty he had seen
But-Jenny's bawbee.
A lawyer neist, wi' bletherin' gab,
Wha speeches wove like ony wab,
In ilk ane's corn aye took a dab,
And a' for a fee:
Accounts he had through a' the town,
And tradesmen's tongues nae mair could drown;
Haith now he thought to clout his gown
Wi' Jenny's bawbee.
A norland laird neist trotted up,
Wi' bawsen'd naig and siller whup,
Cried "There's my beast, lad, haud the grup,
Or tie 't till a tree.
"What's gowd to me?-I've walth o' lan';
Bestow on ane o' worth your han';"
He thought to pay what he was awn
Wi' Jenny's bawbee.
A' spruce frae ban'boxes and tubs,
A Thing cam neist-but life has rubs--
Foul were the roads, and fou the dubs,
Ah! waes me!
A' clatty, squintin' through a glass,
He girned, "I' faith, a bonny lass!"
He thought to win, wi' front o' brass,
Jenny's bawbee.
She bade the laird gang comb his wig,
The sodger no to strut so big,
The lawyer no to be a prig,
The fool cried "Tehee,
I kent that I could never fail!".
She preen'd the dish-clout till his tail,
And cooled him wi' a water-pail,
And kept her bawbee.
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